Tag Archives: foresight

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RFID and the future of social networking

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RFID tagResearchers at the University of Washington are curious to see what effects RFID technology could have on social networking. To see what happens when the tags become ubiquitous, they installed two hundred antennae in and around a campus building and gave tags to twelve researchers. The results? Their every move is recorded by computer. [image by akaalias]

If that sounds sinister, that’s the entire point. The experiment is designed to see if the negative implications for privacy can be balanced by the more positive functions. [via Roland Piquepaille]

It’s good to see these sort of implications being considered in public … maybe we’ve started to learn from our mistakes and keep an eye on the road ahead?

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Renewable fuels ‘could rape the Earth’, claims conservationist

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Contrary to the beliefs of the climate change denial lobby, “the scientists” have not closed ranks and conspired to defend one single point of view. Conservation scientist Jesse Ausubel has stirred up a hornet’s nest by asserting that renewable energy generation will take up too much space and end up destroying the very ecology its proponents intend to save, and that carbon capture and increased nuclear development are the way forward.

I guess that it’s only natural, now the majority of people concur that there is a climate change problem, that we find something new to disagree vehemently over – in the form of what to do about it.

One of the more drastic (and last-ditch) options is geo-engineering. Simulations seem to indicate that these somewhat science fictional scenarios of “hacking” the atmosphere to reduce global temperatures and sequester carbon dioxide in the process are quite plausible … as long as we can maintain the system for a thousand years.